Fight to bring Rover to heel

It looked like a partnership made in high-rise heaven but it turned out to be just a sign of the times.

When MG Rover applied to install a restaurant and car showroom in the vacant cafe spot in one of Sydney's most fashionable apartment blocks, the Altair, all the hallmarks for success were there - an award-winning building, designer cars and an upmarket noshery to boot.

But six months after the snazzy sports cars arrived at the Kings Cross apartment block, the restaurant is still nowhere to be seen, which has put residents in a tailspin to say the least. They claim the restaurant was the only reason they supported the MG Rover development in the first place.

And adding legal insult to designer injury, is a pending court battle over the large sign MG Rover has placed on the building.

The residents say MG Rover put up the sign without so much as by-your-leave and they want the car firm to pay for the privilege.

MG Rover has retaliated by launching a legal action against Altair's executive committee as well as an individual action against the committee's vice-chairman and owner of the building's penthouse, Karl Steinberg.

Steinberg, who is in Sri Lanka setting up a boutique hotel, told Sauce that among MG Rover's claims is the proposition that the owners of Altair apartments agreed to subsidise the firm's car business with an annual donation of $200,000.

"That means that every Altair owner would subsidise Brad Garlick [MG Rover's chairman] by about $1000 each year from their own pockets for the privilege of having his designer cars on our doorstep and his cafe downstairs.

Now Kings Cross is no longer short of designer cars or cafes so we don't understand how they could have made this mistake.

"We are still looking forward to him opening the cafe though, and we think Garlick is a great name for an inner-city eatery."

Well Frankly, my dears . . .

Who better to assess Frank Sartor's reign as lord mayor at Thursday night's $10,000-a-table tribute dinner to him at the town hall than his fictional incarnation, Arcadia Waters Mayor Col Dunkley, aka Geoff Morell, of Grass Roots fame.

Dunkley claimed to have met Sartor a decade earlier at a local government conference. Or was it an ALP conference? he pondered.

"He got rid of the last bowling club and put in that wonderful square outside St Mary's," said Dunkley.

"If I was a much younger man I would be riding a skateboard there now."

Dunkley went on to hail Frank's legacy: "Urban surfing at its best," he told his audience. "We've got the Cook+Phillip Park, Martin Place and that square outside Customs House, thanks to Frank," he joked.

Frank had a few choice quips about life as lord mayor, in what was otherwise a long and rambling speech.

One amusing anecdote he told involved a very thinly disguised reference to The Golden Tonsils, John Laws, who once resided in The Astor in Macquarie Street. Describing this person as a very deep-voiced radio person, Sartor told the audience "I'll call him Mr Identity."

Anyway, Mr Identity had complained to the council about being issued with only two resident parking stickers. Not much use for a man with 12 cars, he whinged to Sartor.

Of that other shock jock, Alan Jones, Sartor smugly pointed out that the Toaster's greatest critic was now in residence. "This Buddhism thing really works," said Sartor, himself a recent convert to the religion.

But the crowd was sadly lacking in representation from his new comrades at Pollie Palace or from the top ranks of Sydney developers.

Eastern suburbs developer Nati Stoliar had a table but Harry Triguboff, whose Meriton has single-handedly reshaped Sydney, stayed away. Instead he sent a large contingent of minions.

Courting disaster

Former playboy Mark Coulton has been kindly generating more fees for members of the legal profession.

You may recall that last December the former Moree cotton farmer - who has now joined the Palm Beach set - had a criminal conviction overturned. The poor chap had been given a 12-month suspended jail sentence, 150 hours of community service and was ordered to repay an associate $169,000 over a tampon fraud, in which it was alleged Coulton had misled his business associate about the quality of the tampons.

In the past week Coulton matters have popped up in Sutherland Local Court, the Federal Court and the Supreme Court of NSW. In one matter a packaging company was attempting to bankrupt Coulton over an alleged $26,000 debt for the packaging of his famous Eco tampons.

Coulton's legal team had that matter dismissed on the grounds that their client claimed not to have received any of the paperwork.

In the Supreme Court, the chief executive officer of Customs was after Coulton. He faces nine charges including smuggling, evasion and making a false statement over the alleged illegal importation of tobacco.

Sit on this

Poor Dianne Mitchell, one moment she's almost a millionaire, the next she's massively out of pocket.

A District Court judge had awarded her $903,811 after she successfully sued the University of Wollongong for not telling her its theatre had retractable seats.

In 1998 she was on hand to witness her son's graduation. She stood up to take some happy snaps of him but when she went to sit down - the seat wasn't there and she fell to the floor and injured herself.

She sued the university for negligence, claiming that the theatre should have put up signs saying the seats were retractable.

However, last week the Court of Appeal overturned the verdict, with Justice Roddy Meagher criticising the growing popularity of suing over failure to erect signs, even when the inherent danger "is glaringly obvious". Criticising some recent cases, Justice Meagher noted: "A council need not draw anyone's attention to the fact that seaside rocks will be slippery if the sea washes over them," and, "a hotelier need not explain to his patrons that an over-enthusiastic consumption of alcohol can lead to drunkenness".

He said that "since every object can in some circumstances be dangerous, it would be inconvenient (to say the least) if it had to carry its own warning notice. The surface of the Earth would be covered with notices which, amongst other things, would distract people from reading any relevant notice. Worse, in these multicultural and anti-discriminatory days, each notice would have to be duplicated in each of the 150 languages spoken in Australia".

In this case, Justice Meagher said: "It would, one would have thought, have been glaringly obvious to any user (or proposed user) of the seats, what would happen if one did not push the seat down before one sat."

His honour went on to say that the Opera House, for instance, a place which Mrs Mitchell visited frequently, had the same kind of seats but carried no signs. He also pointed out that identical seats had been installed in Hoyts cinemas in 1990.

"The usage of these seats at five Hoyts complexes over a 10-11 year period was 1,490,074. Only one injury had been reported during that period in relation to the usage of those seats."

The outcome was that a verdict was entered for Wollongong University, with Mrs Mitchell ordered to pay the costs for the original trial and for the appeal.

Friends like these

The current squabbles in the Labor Party are nothing compared with those going on within One Nation, especially among members of David Oldfield's bridal party.

First of all we had the lawsuit between Oldfield and his groomsman and now, instead of throwing confetti, it seems the MC at last year's wedding would prefer to be hurling other things - possibly a lawsuit - at the groom.

You may recall that Oldfield, One Nation's one and only state MP, and his groomsman, Brian Burston, had a big falling out about who should be No. 1 on the One Nation ticket for the election in March.

Brian was number one on the ticket until replaced by Oldfield's bride, Lisa. This resulted in a messy court case which saw Brian restored to the number one possie - not that it did him any good come election time.

Now the master of ceremonies at the Oldfields' wedding, barrister Chris Hogg, is no longer on speaking terms with Oldfield. Hogg, who represented Oldfield in the Supreme Court hearing over the Burston matter, is owed money for the court case, which he claims Oldfield is refusing to pay.

When asked about his, an indignant Oldfield said he had been ambushed with a bill for $19,000 when he had been led to believe that it would be much less. He said he had paid $10,000 then shot off a letter to the solicitors disputing the rest of the bill.

"I wrote to them, in no uncertain terms, [about] my concern at this . . . I have never heard a word since and that was some months ago."

However, Hogg told Sauce that "neither I nor the solicitors have any unanswered correspondence from David and further steps have now been taken to recover the funds".

Meanwhile, the party is a hotbed of discontent. Burston, the party's state treasurer, does not attempt to hide his loathing for Oldfield. "He befriends those who are of use to him," he told Sauce. "Once people are no longer of use to him, he spits them out. I was groomsmen at his wedding. But when I was pre-selected on the upper house ticket he wanted his wife there, so he burned me."

When Sauce asked Oldfield how One Nation was going to have an effective party with all this in-fighting, Oldfield replied: "We're not going to have one until Brian Burston is no longer in it."

Rene's name still flying high

As the plane flew through the cloudless Sydney sky yesterday morning, bystanders wondered why it was tracing heart shapes in the sky. Soon afterwards, the word Rene appeared - twice.

At first Sauce thought the nation's most famous hypomaniac, Rene Rivkin, had something to do with this grandiose gesture since it was his birthday. On second thoughts perhaps it had been organised by Rivkin's wife, Gayle, to mark their wedding anniversary.

However, Sauce's sleuth Kirsty Needham tracked down the pilot, Glenn Smith, who confirmed that it was The Sunday Telegraph real estate writer, Cindy Martin who had forked out the $3000 for the signwriter to write three love hearts and two Renes in the sky.

Sauce hears that Martin has become quite pally with the Bearded Worrier since meeting him in a park recently, although she claims to have been friends for ages.

Not so chuffed by this turn of events is the Sunday Telegraph editor, Jeni Cooper, who told Sauce: "This is not the kind of stunt we would ever be involved in as a newspaper." Cooper wouldn't disclose what "words" were shared with Martin yesterday, but the signwriter said Martin told him she was prepared to resign if push came to shove. "Maybe I should have thought it through," Martin told Sauce, before adding, "but I would do it again". According to Martin she did it because she is "very, very close friends with Rene and Gayle" and wanted to show her support. The Rivkins were "absolutely thrilled" with the sign, Martin said, and she was asked to join them for dinner.

Sadly for Rivkin no birthday present was forthcoming from the judge yesterday afternoon, as bail was refused. The only reprieve Rene got was that he doesn't have to begin his penitentiary pleasures until today - newcomers have their induction course on Saturday morning rather than the customary Friday night.

In her column last week Cindy Martin said she was outraged by what "the ghastly press" had done to the "gorgeous" Gayle and the "courteous" Rene.